What exactly does Phil Hogan mean by fulsome?

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

In the days after the Oireachtas golf dinner in Clifden, apologies were swirling around as if they were about to go out of fashion.

I’m always amused with public apologies.

Maybe I have a cynical way of thinking about things but I’m forever asking myself would there be any public apologies if those making them had not been caught? 

Is this another instance of the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught.

On the Sunday after the golf dinner Phil Hogan made a second apology and in that apology he said: ‘I thus offer this fulsome and profound apology, at this difficult time for all people, as the world as a whole combats Covid-19’.

Ouch, I wonder does Phil know exactly what the word ‘fulsome’ means.

Language is interesting and can prove great fun at times.

I still have a dictionary, which was my mother’s.

It’s The Concise Oxford Dictionary, printed in 1964. The first edition was published in 1911 and my mother’s was the fifth edition.

Under the word ‘fulsome’ is the following meaning: ‘Cloying, excessive, disgusting by excess, (of flattery, servility. Exaggerated affection).

If you take that as the meaning of the word is there not a suggestion of fake contrition? According to the 1964 Oxford definition of the word it seems to mean the complete opposite to the meaning intended by Phil Hogan.

Some days earlier the Taoiseach Micheál Martin also used the word when he was interviewed on the 6.01 RTE News by Catriona Perry. He  used it in a way similar to that of Phil Hogan.

I pulled down my Collins English Dictionary from the bookshelf and checked ‘Fulsome’.

It gives two meanings for the word. The first meaning: ‘Excessive or insincere, esp. in an offensive or distasteful way.’ 

The second meaning: ‘Not standard. Extremely complimentary’.

This is the second edition of the Collins English Dictionary, first published in 2000 and my copy was printed in 2010.

That leaves it all so ambiguous. I think it’s fair to ask the question, which actual meaning did Phil Hogan intend conveying?

Somehow or other I doubt that Phil meant the insincere meaning.

Every time I hear the word being used I ask myself who actually has changed the meaning of the word?

Does it mean that if a large number of influential people start saying that black is white, that in fact after a period of time and usage black actually becomes white?

Out of the mouths of babes…. But words are really amazing.

And especially so this word fulsome and its two meanings, which seems to make it meaningless. Still, is it some sort of paradigm for a greater story? Might it just be that it’s a perfect example in explaining to us that maybe it is true after all that politicians do talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time?

I’m wondering how the legal people would deal with the meaning of this word? Take it a step further, who decides on the meaning of words. And let’s go another step, who decides on anything?

Maybe the lesson of the day is that we should never be fulsome in our praise of anyone, whichever meaning the word has.